The Magic Formula Behind Going Viral On Reddit

Have you ever wondered why a photo of a cat or video of a dancing baby goes viral on the internet for no apparent reason? You may be at work, on Facebook, or talking with a friend when someone drops the line, “Hey, you gotta see this video.” Next thing you know, you and everyone you know are stopped dead in their tracks to watch its magnificent glory, only to leave you moments later wondering what just happened.

That kind of video is everywhere. No matter how hard you try, you can’t escape it. If you are like me, you may assume that these videos blow up by accident. That there is no magic formula for producing “viral” content.

Brian built his business, Ghost Influence, an online community driving 7 million pageviews a day on Reddit, by cracking the formula behind how viral happens. His community, composed of people like you and me, is able to go into any market in any niche and make content go “viral.” According to Scott Stratten, the president of Un-Marketing, a “viral” moment happens when you achieve a “greater reach than your own. Viral isn't a number, viral is simply going farther than you can reach.”

Some of his past wins include: making a girl on Tinder world-famous by generating 25 million impressions to her profile picture in 72 hours, creating an online app where users register to receive the most “absurd email to give in a bar”, generating 11,000 pageviews and 564 signups in the first 30 minutes, and building his ex-fiancé’s dog a YouTube channel with 6,800 subscribers and 3.8M views.

I caught up with Brian on this week’s podcast episode here, where he shares all of the details on how viral happens:

Brian’s journey started in 2013 when he decided to run eerily targeted facebook ads to prank his roommate… for three weeks. Every few days his roommate would log in and see an ad revealing intimate details that only someone like a girlfriend or his roommate would know. After his roommate was understandable super freaked out, Brian ran one last ad saying, “Ever feel like your roommate is creating Facebook ads targeted to a niche of just you?”

Notably one of the best pranks ever. After sharing the story with people, Brian decided to write this article as his first blog post to document the whole thing and posted it to Reddit. Seventy-two hours later it had garnered 450,000 views.